I am a paddler and guide from North Wales and am completing a masters at Bangor University School of Psychology. We are trying to investigate what it is that motivates people like us to take risks, who, if anyone takes more risks that lead to injury-to increase safety within outdoor recreation, and what people get from high-risk sports.

The link below will take you to an anonymous online survey that takes about 10 minuets to complete. Once completed you will be asked to enter an email address to win a FREE tablet worth £160 as a thank you for participating. Your email address will be kept separate from the survey to maintain anonymity, and only used to contact you to for delivery of the tablet.

I started to complete the survey but at about 13% completed it gives you a list of sports and asks you to indicate which one you most identify yourself with. Kayaker is not one of the options and you can't move on unless you complete something. Bit of a flaw I think.

I've done your survey - it would be rather nice were you to share the outcome of the research. A couple of years ago, when someone else was asking for input in a survey she did so and it was very interesting reading.

By way of feedback:

1:Like Kate D, I would prefer to know with whom I'm interacting.
2:You refer to sea kayaking on one of the activity pages - but not the other. Continuity!
3:You have a question about smoking, for those of us who have indicated we smoke. But we don't all smoke cigarettes!
4:Your question about drinking alcohol. It's a little ambiguous. Do you mean "units" of alcohol? Which may well be different from what you're noting.
5:Finally - you might want to proof-read the questions on the page near the end, the one titled "Emotions - This final set of questions are a tool to assess your ability to recognise or describe how you feel."

As someone who has spent a fair chunk of his life in academic research I see the direction that the survey is heading and I think it is an interesting one, and something I have often considered myself. However, I like to think of my sea kayaking as "challenging" rather than "high risk" but I guess it depends on your perspective. Good preparation, practice and training mitigates most hazards in our sport so, in my view, the risk is negligible when compared with, say, wingsuit flying or road cycling.

As others have pointed out, there are quite a few mistakes in the survey, it looks rushed, and one could argue that the the errors in the Emotions section could make the results invalid.

As Kate and Mike point out, a name would make it more legitimate, especially as you say that you are paddler and guide in North Wales. My guess is that a few of us will know you - there is no need to hide! In fact, if you go on to doctoral or professional research getting your name out there is super important!!!!

Please Please Please write a short summary of your findings here. I am sure that we will all be very interested and it is a nice way to pay back those who took part in the survey. I ticked as a participant in few of the activities and it would be very interesting to see how personality type varies with sport.

I wonder whether you need to consider whether everyone who participate in say sea kayaking (and this is a sea kayaking forum) thinks that what they are doing is "high risk"? I do go sea kayaking, and i don't think it's high risk - I estimate teh biggest risk is a road traffic accident while travelling to participate.

Likewise, I also wonder if I am really taking part in a "high risk" sport - I stopped filling in the survey as I don't personally regard the Sea Kayaking which I do as high risk, therefore I didn't think adding my personality type profile to the research would have added anything.
It's an interesting perception though as although the risk of serious, but non fatal, injury is probably much less than in most of the other sports I take part in, I suspect the result of any incident leading to a fatality is probably fairly similar, if not greater - although statistically probably less likely . Perhaps a bit more digging into perceived risks v actual risks needs to be done by someone.
My own impression is that the number of incidents involving kayakers on the sea (whether they call themselves sea kayakers or not...) has reamined fairly static over the years while the number of "sea kayakers" has risen massively in the 20 + years that I have regarded "sea kayaking" as one of my sports / hobbies.

I wonder whether you need to consider whether everyone who participate in say sea kayaking (and this is a sea kayaking forum) thinks that what they are doing is "high risk"? I do go sea kayaking, and i don't think it's high risk - I estimate teh biggest risk is a road traffic accident while travelling to participate.

If you consider a specific group of people, I presume it would work to address sea kayaking as a high risk sport.
But ask for instance a kite surfer or parasailer if they consider there sport as being high risk....
By taking all precautions, the biggest part of the risk is eliminated, so we do not experience this as a high risk sport, but if you don't take the precautions...
we call the RNLI..

Research looks very funny.
I have British Parachute Association Free Fly ,Jump Master ,more than 350 jump in past (that including one malfunction)
and wandering what is that : Banzai Sky Diver ??
One of the term in research.